Understanding and operating an oil and gas production asset as a single holistic system has been frustrated by significant impediments. For any asset, there are typically multiple applications, multiple data sets, multiple taxonomies and multiple users, also referred to herein as stakeholders, some or all of which may be sharing common data across the asset. Interoperability among these programs, persons, and structures as a single system, while desired, has been frustrated by the lack of an underlying framework for handling the necessary transformations, translations, and definitions required between and among the various system components.
Attempts to provide this understanding and operation have previously focused on providing data replication, where each stakeholder group develops or receives its own version of the logical network and data model that includes all of its requirements. In these attempts, the act of transforming the data model by correlating changes between the data model representations has not been done or has been done crudely. Although some level of interoperability has been achieved by point to point integration, it is largely limited to supporting single workflows. Moreover, changes to the data model representations cannot be effectively controlled when each stakeholder can decide whether such changes should be applied (accepted) and communicated to the other stakeholders.
Other impediments to real time data management include, for example, the use of different calls or names for the same data object and different methods for the same operation. Each data object and each operation may represent a separate data model representation. Consequently, each stakeholder's ability to effectively access updates to a data object and uniformly apply a preferred method to a particular operation are significantly impaired. A stakeholder, for example, may refer to the same data object by a different name thus, impairing the ability to communicate changes to the data object between different stakeholders. Each stakeholder may also utilize a different method for a particular operation when a preferred method is desired to maintain uniform operation results. Moreover, a stakeholder is often required to log onto a network to access a client server before downloading the desired data model representations or any changes made thereto. This sequence is typically required each time access to the data model is desired.
There is therefore, a need for systems and methods to provide uninterrupted interoperability among the various data sets, applications, taxonomies and stakeholders sharing data across a production asset. In other words, there is a need for dynamic linking between the stakeholders and the data model representations that allows the stakeholders to maintain access to each database and receive data model updates in real time. In addition, there is a need for a uniform system that calls objects within an object class by a common name and determines a preferred method for each operation within a collaborative environment.